(a found poem about the Santa Fe High School)
My gratitude to who are
gathering with us to deal with
the most heinous magnitude of evil:
Fear.
Ten lives.
Many victims will suffer in the days to come,
prepare a parent for the loss of a child.
We mourn, we come together in enormous suffering.
We look to God,
“Respond to this challenge!”
In the aftermath of this catastrophe,
do more than just pray for the victims, take
action.
Stakeholders begin to
work.
Swift solutions prevent
tragedies.
Second Amendment Rights will protect Second Amendment Rights.
Mental health issues behind gun violence…
focus to reduce guns,
mental health,
identify risk.
In the aftermath, the answers are not always there.
We are still, still in the process of asking:
Who was responsible for the shooting?
We know information:
the Shooter, he wanted to
commit
the shooting,
commit
suicide.
We have certain information:
a shot gun
a .38 revolver
obtained from his father
This is something that can be worked out
Investigation and response:
Everyone sends sons and daughters off to school.
Horror greets them,
then the community grieves an unimaginable grief.
Prayers by millions.
We need to be doing everything humanly possible to
stop
this from ever happening again.
Stop
them from getting firearms.
Stop
this horrible atrocity.
At great cost and great sacrifice, we grieve the horror.
© Icess Fernandez Rojas
Texas Governor on Santa Fe High School Shooting
Icess Fernandez Rojas is an educator, writer, and former journalist. She lives in Houston and is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA program. Her work has been published in Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective's anthology Notes from Humanity. Her nonfiction has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, and is also a Kimbilio Fellow. She's currently working on her first novel. Twitter: @Icess
